Now, I'm not going on a rant here about whether or not Q-banned people should be prevented from asking questions on MSO, that's been discussedplenty of times.

What I'm interested in is how many question-banned people come to Meta and actually ask constructive questions here following that ban on SO.

Really I'm thinking that if it's still pretty common for banned posters to still be constructive Meta users then this question would be useful to link to when people suggest q-banned people be blocked from meta. (That is if it's even possible to find that out).

MSO has a lot of other uses for non-SO folks (until it - possibly - becomes meta.stackexchange) so there is still value in people being able to post here, but my own curiousity at whenever people try to post either coding questions or 'why am I banned' questions here makes me wonder if there are other question-banned folks out there who are still using Meta for sensible purposes.

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I cannot really figure out what you are trying to say here. I think you perhaps wanted to post an answer in the linked discussions instead?
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Martijn PietersFeb 25 '13 at 12:55

I understand your motivation , but taking away all possibility to communicate with the community following a ban seems a bit harsh. There is the occasional almost-innocent or borderline case, and Meta can help them understand what went wrong, and find voting support to get the ban lifted. I think that alone is worth allowing them to post on Meta... although maybe Meta posts from q-banned users should be easier to kill with fire (or merge with the "What can I do..." question without requiring moderator attention)
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PëkkaFeb 25 '13 at 13:01

I don't want to ban people posting on MSO at all, that's really why I'm asking. I want some ammo to show that we shouldn't ban these people, and here's some stats to show why.
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JonWFeb 25 '13 at 13:06

Ah, I see. I think the stats on this are going to look dismal and not help the case though. To me, this is more of a "it's worth doing it even if it works only for 1 out of 1000" argument
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PëkkaFeb 25 '13 at 13:08

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Is there perhaps a related discussion going on somewhere else that prompted you to inquire?
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Tim Post♦Feb 25 '13 at 13:20

@TimPost Nope, just trying to convince myself with some hard evidence so I don't get so annoyed whenever I see stupid MSO posts from post-banned people.
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JonWFeb 25 '13 at 13:32

@JonW Simply don't get annoyed. They are often easy enough to deal with. The occasional constructive banned user makes it all worth it.
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BartFeb 25 '13 at 15:22

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@Bart yeah but it does waste peoples time having to deal with them. I'd at least like to know it's not a total waste of their time because there are plenty of other post-banned people who do use MSO usefully. However it sounds like the number of people who do fit that scenario is pretty small.
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JonWFeb 25 '13 at 15:30

1 Answer
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There's no real way for me to query this, as I don't have a way to query a list of users here on meta that are question banned on the main site. However, I can share this, and all values are approximate and from memory:

Approximately 15 users have come very close to lifting the ban, and came to meta to ask quite plainly and constructively what else they could possibly do. Most of these questions were well written and well received.

At least one user came here after working through the ban, with ideas on how the ban could be improved by providing more structure for users to work through (e.g. improve x number of questions, provide n number of up-voted answers)

Several users that were question banned asked perfectly good support questions in the course of trying to provide good answers to help lift the ban

Overall, they tend to fall in the following three categories:

They just post their programming question here

They didn't read the help they were given, and ask 'why was I banned?'

They ask specific, constructive questions about what else can be done to lift the ban, or suggestions on how the system could handle the whole process better.

Answering your question specifically non-specifically, not that many - however the ones that actually stick around subsequently tend to be great users. An employee might be able to chime in with harder data, but it would mean a bit of digging.

To be politically incorrect - as for the rest, no great loss.
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J. SteenFeb 25 '13 at 13:12

There will possibly be other people who come to MSO for general StackExchsnge queries who are active on other SE sites but banned on SO. Those are some I'm curious about to.
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JonWFeb 25 '13 at 13:15

@JonW Possible, but probably rare to unlikely. Unless it's something network specific, most folks just post on the per site meta sites. There might be useful data there, but .. fringe at best. But, well, you don't know until you're actually looking at it I suppose.
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Tim Post♦Feb 25 '13 at 13:18